


The End of Secrets

by Porphyrios



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Character Death, Dark, Established Relationship, I mean seriously y'all, M/M, Misery, Pining, This will hurt your heart
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-04
Updated: 2019-11-04
Packaged: 2021-01-22 13:42:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,460
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21303032
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Porphyrios/pseuds/Porphyrios
Summary: Harry goes to visit Draco in hospice, but doesn't expect to be told what he learns.  Sometimes our actions have more consequences than we know.
Relationships: Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter, Harry Potter/Ginny Weasley
Comments: 10
Kudos: 78





	The End of Secrets

Harry steeled himself as he passed through the swinging doors; dear Merlin, he hated these sorts of places. The nurse behind the hospice desk had returned to her magazine as soon as the sign-in paperwork was complete. The bland beigeish-brown tiles clicked softly under his heels as he made his way down the hall, a nauseating accompaniment to the mint green walls. The air was still and stale, feeling flat and musty as it always was in these places. Doors gaped in the walls as he passed like missing teeth, each one a gateway into someone else's misery. Curtains were drawn over most, but occasionally he could see a wasted form within, sometimes with people standing, sitting, already mourning, but usually alone, staring off into space or lying with eyes closed waiting patiently for the end. One of the doors was festooned with garish birthday decorations, brightly colored party hats and cakes as incongruous here as a clown in a mausoleum. His left knee was aching, as it usually did these days; he made a conscious effort not to limp. Outside room 218, the door was pushed almost completely shut. There was no sign of occupation other than a printed sign that said simply 'MALFOY'. Harry's stomach burned with bile as he pushed it open and stepped inside.

The window curtains were open, unusually enough for a ward, and pale winter sunlight filtered into the room. The gardens outside were visible, though the naked branches made for a somewhat depressing sight. All the plants were trimmed and waiting for spring to arrive, but the empty garden looked desolate despite being clearly well-tended. Harry almost turned and fled when he saw the figure on the bed. Malfoy was wasted and gaunt, shriveled face lined and thinning silver hair cut brutally short. He was lying in the bed half-gasping as he breathed, medical detritus covering the nightstand nearby left by careless nurses. He looked like a skeleton already, Harry thought sadly. As if in response to the thought, Draco's eyes fluttered open and took in Harry standing at his bedside. The eyes were the worst of all, Harry thought. Draco's eyes were always fiercely aware, alight with intelligence; these eyes were filmy, half-drugged looking, struggling to make sense of what they saw. Soon enough, though, they focused and at least a shred of the old Draco Malfoy shone through, along with a warm, open look Harry never imagined seeing. The look only lasted a moment, though, and then was hidden away again.

"Po..." Draco coughed feebly and motioned for a water cup with a straw sitting nearby. Harry offered the straw for a sip, and Draco wetted his throat and tried again. "Potter... you came. I didn't know if you would." Painfully thin hands plucked at the coverlet, smoothing it over and over.

"Of course I came," Harry said, trying to project warmth and bravado and give no sign of how much seeing Malfoy like this affected him. "When the nurse told me you wanted to see me, how could I not come?" Harry eased himself down into the chair nearby. His hips were starting to bother him when he stood for very long, and sitting was worse. Christ, he thought wearily, nobody told me getting old would be like this. We're only 60, and I'm already falling apart and Draco... "How are you feeling today?" He could have cursed himself as soon as the words were out. Social chitchat worked until it very much didn't.

Draco gave a very familiar snort. "I'm dying, Potter. Soon now, I think. But thanks for asking." The expression on the wasted face was a faded echo of the old sneer, but Harry was willing to play along with it, anything to pretend that normality could be stretched to cover this. Withered legs moved restlessly under the coverlet. Harry honestly wanted to run away. The horror of seeing a familiar face in this situation was intolerable. Draco gave a half-smile. "I'm sure that I'm quite a sight. Sorry to drag you to a place like this for one last chat." 

Harry tried to smile but suspected it looked more like a grimace. "It's fine, Malfoy. Happy to come." The wheezing chuckle this produced generated a rattling, horrible cough that went on and on. Finally Draco gasped for breath and took another sip of water. Panting a bit, he lay back down.

"You always were a... horrible liar," he snorted, "but you came. I appreciate it." Draco looked away, out the window and into the remains of the garden outside. "I wanted to... well. They say we shouldn't go without wrapping up all our business if we can. I don't know if it would matter once I was dead, but... it matters now." Harry looked at him with a puzzled expression. Draco sighed. "Things that were so important are pointless at times like these. We've come to the end of secrets, I suppose."

=

_Harry knew Draco was working with him at Hogwarts on the repairs, that summer. It was good work, healing the broken castle and using hard labor to avoid thinking about all the problems that didn't die with the Dark Lord. With Voldemort dead, Harry was delighted to be done with having to worry about what Malfoy was doing. It wasn't like Malfoy was hiding, but Harry was content to ignore him. He saw him around, of course. A flash of blond hair during the work crew meetings; a drawling, sarcastic voice coming from a back table at mealtimes. During the second week, Harry was working on one of the battlements with Neville, trying to get the repaired crenelations to match the unbroken ones. Neville's magic had improved drastically in the year Harry had been away, and the two of them were working in companionable silence, shaping stone fragments back into stone with spells they had only learned weeks before but that now were as instinctive as breathing._

_Looking down from the space where the new stones would go, he could see a blond figure on the walls smoothing stone, easing cracks away with the wand Harry had returned wordlessly only a few weeks ago. Malfoy looked different, he realized. The shoulders that had always been hunched up around his ears had relaxed, and were quite broad. His hands were long and fine, gesturing at the stone over and over with an economy of motion and elegance Harry could never have hoped to duplicate. The platinum blond hair was shining in the light like a fallen piece of sun. Harry felt a strange pull to keep watching, but very quickly Draco looked around, looked up, and saw that he was observed. His only response was to lift two fingers skyward, then pull a cloud of shimmering magic around himself to shield him from view. Harry was frustrated without wondering why, and suddenly realized that Neville was calling his name. Had been, in fact, for several minutes._

_"What are you watching?" Neville asked, looking down to where there was now nothing to see but the shimmer of cloaking spell, easily mistaken for heat rising from the old stone walls. "You looked... very intent." Neville scanned the area, thankfully looking away from Harry, who was unaccountably flushed and embarrassed. _

_"Nothing." His voice sounded rough even to his own ears. "It was nothing. Thought I saw something." Neville shrugged and nodded, then resumed his work. Slowly, the battlements were restored and another tiny piece of the castle was put right._

_From that moment, Harry's old obsession seemed to return. He was always watching, wondering where Malfoy was, what he was doing. This was different though, somehow. He didn't know what he wanted, just that he somehow needed to see Malfoy, watch him, understand him somehow by looking at him. It didn't make any sense, but Harry was used to nonsensical things by now. After the war, there was no sense to be had, things just were. And this need to see Malfoy, to watch him, to run his eyes over him, it just was, that's all. Like breathing, or walking._

_As the days went by, Draco seemed to become aware of Harry's fixation. At first he seemed irritated, but then he looked more and more curious. Finally, after two weeks, he was acting as though he reveled in it. Harry was surprised to see Draco even in places he wasn't normally to be found, lounging against the wall, walking slowly across the courtyard, lingering in doorways, silver eyes always alight with challenge and amusement. Harry watched him in turn, eyes turning to follow the slender form of the other boy like a sunflower turning to follow the sun. More and more, Draco became omnipresent, showing up unexpectedly in the oddest places, always managing to be at the same table at meals (as Harry watched the strong jaws taking bites of food, chewing, the muscular column of his throat flexing as he swallowed), wandering through the halls (legs flexing and relaxing as he walked, arse looking amazing in fitted work pants), loitering near his worksite (silver eyes flashing a haughty challenge, soft lips almost sneering but almost smiling). After a week or so of this, one night he just opened Harry's bedroom door without knocking and strode in, closing it behind himself decisively. When his lips pressed against Harry's shocked mouth, it was the most natural thing in the world to kiss him back._

=

"The end of secrets?" Harry rasped, then cleared his throat awkwardly. Draco was staring at him with a strange expression, half pity and half... what? "What do you mean?"

"Tell me, Potter... Harry..." He was always vaguely startled to hear Draco use his first name, though it wasn't unheard of when they ran into each other over the years. "Did you ever wonder why I didn't settle down with anyone?" Draco's eyes were sad now, looking almost at Harry but seeming to be focused behind him.

"A bit," Harry confessed. "I mean... I understand why you didn't marry, but..." He paused awkwardly. Conversations like this were always fraught, even in normal circumstances, something that couldn't be less true of the current situation.

Draco gave another wheezing chuckle. Luckily this one didn't cause coughing, and he spoke with a trace of his old acerbic tones. "You mean because I'm bent as an old pin? Typical narrow-mindedness, Potter... two men can marry now, you know." An attempt at an arch look was foiled by a wince at some unseen muscle spasm. "Just not me. Never me." The shadow of old pains was clearly visible in the washed out grey eyes. "The ones I wanted never seemed to want me. Not enough, anyway. I always seemed to be the second choice, somehow. Not as important as... well, as whatever else was on offer. After a while, the heart can't take much more. Of that. So I stopped looking." Harry felt like a giant hand was gripping his chest. This wasn't what he had come expecting at all, but he couldn't leave after something like that. "I just... wasn't able to deal with any more rejections. I always thought I would find love, you know? My parents met at Hogwarts. They knew right away. I thought that was how it worked, even with me being, well, queer. And I did find someone." For a second the eyes were the same silver-grey eyes from a long ago summer at Hogwarts. "I knew that I had found the person I was destined to love. But somehow... somehow it didn't quite work out like that, did it?" The last few words were difficult for Draco to get out, voice rasping. Harry felt the constriction in his chest even tighter, wondering for a moment if he was having a heart attack. Wouldn't that just be ironic, he thought in a moment of inappropriate hilarity, come to visit a dying friend and die myself?

"Draco..." Harry tried to interrupt, anything to stop the flow of these revelations.

"Shut up, Potter. I'm talking." Draco's face belied the strength in his words; he looked like he was at the end of his strength. "I'll be dead soon, let me say what I need to say." A rattling breath, then another. Lips firmed, and the chin lifted in an approximation of the old Draco's hauteur. "I loved you from the moment I saw a little boy with the greenest eyes I ever saw being fitted for robes in a store he never knew existed. I hated you but I loved you, and every time I needed you, you were there, even when you hated me, you saved me. Saved me!" Draco's eyes flashed in spite of his obvious exhaustion. "Do you have any idea how fucking demeaning that is, to have the person who you most want to impress saving your life over and over again, like it was nothing? God I hated you and I hated myself for wanting you, but I wanted you like fire wants wood. And seven long years after I first saw you and first wanted you, even after we tried to kill each other, I got you. For a month. Even in that month, I fell so in love with you I felt like I was dying. And I found out that the only thing worse than wanting you and not having you was getting you and then having you walk away." Draco hawked painfully and spit into an empty cup, then took a sip of water. Harry felt like he was made of lead, like his blood had been drained when he wasn't looking and replaced with stone. He was beginning to think that he was in hell, drinking from this terrible, bitter spring of painful words. "After that... Merlin, I lost my mind. I had sex with so many men, trying to find something to make me want to keep living. I did... so many stupid things." Another weak chuckle. "There were a few others. I found a few men that I wanted for more than just a quick tumble, but... I don't know. Probably they could tell my heart was never fully theirs? I don't know what they thought. Michael moved away to take a job; Garrett got back with his ex-lover. 'So sorry, so terribly sorry to tell you this, but'. But. But. But you lost out. But you weren't enough, good enough, worthy enough to be my choice. Anyone's choice. Nobody wants you, Draco Malfoy. Nobody wants you enough to choose you over anything else." Harry's eyes were dry and he realized he had been staring, transfixed through these revelations of suffering. Draco's face looked like a mask of death. "Certainly not the one you wanted most of all. But Harry," grey eyes bored into him like diamond-tipped augers, "I never stopped wanting you. I never stopped loving you. I was almost glad when they told me about the cancer, you know? Because if there's any fairness, I can finally stop wanting something I can never have."

"My God, Draco." Harry's lips and tongue were dry as bones. "I had no idea... I..."

"You knew. You didn't want to know, but you knew. You chose what you chose, and I lived with it because I had no choice. But it's done now. I just wanted you to know. That's all. Now run along home to the wife and grandkids, and let me get on with dying. Thank you for coming." With that Draco closed his eyes and nothing Harry said could produce a reaction. Finally he stood up and left, stumbling in a daze past the nurse still reading Hello! magazine in her ward full of dying people.

=

_An hour after that first kiss, Draco rolled over, naked body pressing against Harry's side, making his cock twitch despite being thoroughly drained by the night's activities. Grey eyes stared down into green, and Draco said suddenly "Please tell me this means something."_

_"What?" Harry replied stupidly. "What do you..."_

_"This," Draco's gesture encompassed their naked bodies and the bed. He had an expression Harry had never seen on his face before, a soft half-smile of pleasure rather than amusement, but still cautious. "If this isn't anything but a fuck to you, tell me now. It was fun, but if that's all this is, I don't want to do this again. I have... I'm not just horny, Potter. This was special to me. Harry," he said softly, eyes shining. Harry realized this was the first time he had ever heard Draco use his given name. He wasn't sure how to respond; he wasn't used to finding men attractive, let alone sleeping with them. And the sight of Draco Malfoy making himself vulnerable like this was frankly unimaginable._

_"I don't... God, Draco," a soft hiss of inhaled breath at the name, "I never did anything like this. With a man. I mean... with anyone, really. It was amazing, you were amazing, I just... everything in my head is spinning around right now." He knew instinctively this wasn't the right answer, but he also had no idea what to say._

_"Well," Draco said softly, face slamming into a neutral expression. He stood up, rummaging for his clothes which were flung all over the floor. "I suppose it was too much to ask. Thank you for a wonderful night to remember. See you around, I suppose."_

_"Wait... Draco!" The door closed, not quite a slam but not quite anything else, and Draco was gone._

_That wasn't the end of it, of course. It seemed pointless to even try to resist. For weeks, they would eye each other for hours, then end up in bed. It wasn't about tenderness; more sexual collisions than lovemaking, they explored every inch of each others' bodies, grappling like wrestlers in the throes of passion. Draco never said another word, but Harry would sometimes catch him staring at him afterwards, a soft, longing look that went through him like a bolt of lightning. Like lightning, it was powerful but also terrifying. Finally, when the summer's repairs had wound down for the coming semester, they went home for a few weeks until classes started. The last night, they fucked endlessly, over and over, wearing each other raw and painful, clutching at each other like drowning men. The next morning, Draco watched as Harry Apparated to the Burrow, and Harry's last sight of him was haunted eyes and a brief, mimed kiss._

_When he returned to school, he asked to talk to Draco privately. He had spent his time at the Burrow doing nothing but brooding and thinking, tying himself in knots, but he knew what he had to do. He told Draco that they couldn't keep on like that, he wanted kids, a normal life, and all the logical, sensible reasons that it could never work between them. Draco was fine when he left, and he tried not to hear the broken sobbing after he closed the door. Draco avoided him the rest of the year, but that was understandable, and Ginny was always there. Hopefully he and Draco could at least be friends in the future, and sure enough, they were. After a fashion._

=

Harry sat in his study with the door locked, a snifter of brandy on his desk. Albus and the kids were visiting, he could hear Ginny calling to little Rubeus. Harry knew he should go see them, but the previous day's visit had left him shaken. Shattered, really. He couldn't tell Ginny about it, or anyone; nobody knew about that month. Since talking to Draco, though, it was all he could think about. Remembering the passion of it all, the shocking feeling of hanging over an abyss and not caring if he fell. A pecking at the window drew his attention. He waved his wand to open the window, and an unfamiliar owl came in from the twilight and perched, leg extended. Once he retrieved the message, the owl departed immediately. With a sinking heart, he unrolled the official parchment.

'Regret to inform you... passed away... deepest sympathies...' All the platitudes carefully used, there was nothing in this official notification to indicate that a real human had died. A human who had, apparently, loved Harry for 49 years. He slumped in his chair, wondering for the thousandth time if he had really known what he was doing when he made that decision. Tears streamed down his cheeks as Ginny banged on the door of the study.

"Harry? Harry, are you in there? Come see your grandchildren!" All he could do was cry helplessly, sobbing as quietly as possible in the empty office as the last of the day's light faded outside into darkness.


End file.
